The invention generally relates to a novel method for producing a material composition for a phonograph record. More specifically, the present invention discloses a process for recovering the plastic material from the centers of existing phonograph records and combining the recovered material with other readily available materials to form a new phonograph record blank. The record blank produced by the process disclosed herein possesses a uniform composition which evidences relatively fine sound reproducing properties.
Old phonograph records are generally discarded by consumers soon after their useful life has passed. The length of a record's useful life depends on a multitude of factors e.g. the audio taste of the listener, the number of times the record is played, scratching and breakage during handling and the quality of the phonographic equipment and records.
Similarly, when a record is defectively produced by a manufacturer, the manufacturer will discard the phonograph record. A common occurance in the record industry is that a well produced phonograph record is prevented from being publicly distributed due to the faulty and defective placement of the record label upon the record blank. These records, too, are discarded as waste product.
Some manufacturers in the record industry have a practice of punching out the labelled centers from these defective or useless records and then using the material obtained from the outer record section or resulting doughnut-shaped rings as base material for a composition for pressing into new records.
Therefore, the present invention envisions utilizing the plastic material of the usually discarded record centers as a constituent material in the production of new records. Thus the recovery of the plastic from the centers of the records substantially increases the percentage amount of the material which could previously be recovered from a discarded record.
It is thus seen that the present invention removes the paper labels from the centers of defective or old phonograph records, grinds these processed centers into small particles in a mill, sieves the resulting particles by size passing the particles through an electromagnet, and subsequently combines the recovered material with the scraps from other records either obtained before their labels have been attached or the scraps from the aforementioned doughnut-shaped rings or outer record sections along with briquets of a suitable plastic composition and new polyvinyl chloride (P.V.C.) to produce a composition suitable for being pressed into a new record blank.